What are the legal remedies available when a patient dies due to medical errors?

Legislation in most states of the country makes provisions for the family and loved ones of someone that died due to hospital neglect, medical malpractice, or professional negligence on part of a healthcare professional or healthcare organization in order for them to receive compensation for their loss.

They may do so by filing a combination of a medical malpractice lawsuit and/or a wrongful death lawsuit and/or a survivor action claim say Charleston, SC medical malpractice lawyers.

What are the key differences between wrongful death actions and survivor actions?

There are two types of lawsuits that may ensue after the death of a person can broadly be classified into two different groups, namely, a wrongful death action or a survivor action.

These can both be filed in cases of medical malpractice where the patient ends up dead as a result of mistreatment, substandard treatment, and erroneous diagnosis, to name a few. In fact, medical malpractice legal professionals say that in many cases where death occurred, the victim’s estate is better off filing both such lawsuits so that they can maximize what they recover in terms of damages.

A wrongful death action and a survivor action are different in the sense that they offer different types of compensatory damages. Either avenue taken will involve Southeast South Carolina medical malpractice attorneys.

Wrongful death actions – the basics

When the estate of a deceased medical malpractice victim filed a wrongful death action they are basically alleging that the victim died as a result of a hospital neglect, nursing home abuse, or a medical error that occurred due to negligence and would have not occurred under the care of a reasonable medical professional.

This type of a claim also goes to establish that the victim had close family members and that these relatives have suffered specific losses (of a compensable nature) due to the death of the victim. It also makes the argument that the medical professional or the medical organization such as the hospital is liable for compensating the family for their loss and damages.

What needs to be clearly understood about a wrongful death claim, in the opinion of Charleston, SC medical malpractice lawyers, is the fact that such a lawsuit does not actually claim damages for the harm inflicted upon the deceased victim due to medical malpractice. It seeks to compensate the living loved ones/close family members of the victim for their losses as a result of the death of the victim.

Survivor actions – the basics

Moving on to survivor actions, the key difference in such a lawsuit when contrasted to a wrongful death lawsuit is the fact that it actually claims damages for the pain and suffering that the deceased victim faced and went through prior to his or her death and their Charleston, South Carolina medical malpractice lawyer will be right there with them working with them in this time of tragedy.

A survivor action lawsuit basically states that the negligent healthcare provider/organization should not escape liability simply because the patient that suffered is now dead. Instead, they should pay up for their negligent actions and pay this sum forward to the surviving members of the deceased malpractice and/or hospital neglected victim.

Your loved one may have been taken from you too soon. From a positive angle, this is why this website could not have been built soon enough: http://medical-malpractice.usattorneys.com/south-carolina/. If the hospital is not even going to apologize for what happened in a meaningful way they are certainly not going to inform you about this website. If you need legal help, this legal resource center is where you need to go. There is probably even free WiFi in the hospital.